AmpleHarvest.org helps gardeners donate their excess to feed those in need

Robert Sciarrino/The Star-Ledger Gary Oppenheimer in the doorway of his West Milford home with some of the vegetables he just picked from his garden. He founded and runs AmpleHarvest.org, a web-based charitable organization that helps home growers donate their excess harvests to area food banks.

The home harvest is about to peak for thousands of backyard gardeners, and as experienced growers know, the yield in even a small plot can be overwhelming. Zucchini, anyone?

After you’ve eaten your fill, preserved what you can and given away all you might to friends and neighbors, there may still be fresh-grown produce to spare.

Instead of composting the excess, throwing it away or tilling it under, consider sharing your bounty with those who find it hard to put food on the table in this grim economy. How? By turning to AmpleHarvest.org, an online organization that connects backyard gardeners with nearby food pantries happy to accept fresh food.

Barely 14 months old, the website has a registry of nearly 2,400 food pantries serving all 50 states. The nationwide campaign began with one man, Gary Oppenheimer of West Milford, who has served as director of his local community garden for the past two years. Distressed by the waste of produce rotting on neglected plants, he took one of those world-changing leaps of thought and envisioned AmpleHarvest.org.

Diminishing hunger through the generosity of gardeners is a simple but powerful idea that has become his passion and his mission. Developed with a “zero budget” and offering its services free to all, AmpleHarvest.org has taken off and gone viral because it is so obviously right and good.

“According to the latest statistics, there are as many as 49 million Americans who face food insecurity,” he says. “That’s the equivalent of the entire population of 23 states.

“Researchers also say there are 41 million Americans raising food crops — fruits, vegetables, herbs and nuts,” Oppenheimer continues. “If each of them donated only 10 pounds of produce or about what would fit in one grocery bag, that’s one heck of a lot of food.”

As a sales representative for fax services, Oppenheimer says his strength is formulating easy-to-grasp marketing messages. When he urges gardeners to “reach into their backyards instead of their back pockets” to help others, the intent of AmpleHarvest is made plain.

Successful outreach

Putting the idea into action was still a challenge. When the AmpleHarvest.org website was launched in May 2009, Oppenheimer faced an immediate deadline.

“I had to get a decent number of pantries involved by late July or early August, or I would miss my window of opportunity to make a credible start with that year’s harvest,” he says. “From the start, so many things happened by serendipity and sheer luck.”

One was getting a strong initial response from e-mails to 250 food banks, the regional warehouses that supply community food pantries. Another was a chance connection with Bill Hoffman, the U.S. Department of Agriculture official who provides national leadership for master gardener programs run by state extension services.

He also is a graduate of Rutgers University’s Environmental Steward program and is keenly interested in “green” issues. Oppenheimer has a 14-acre homestead in rural West Milford that he shares with his wife, daughter and a bear-chasing dog. He found his way to gardening as most of us do: by trial, error and seeking help from others.

He tends an orchard and food gardens of his own, but really began to focus on the bigger picture when he was persuaded in 2008 to become director of the 30-plot community garden operated by Sustainable West Milford, an organization founded by Dave and Wendy Watson-Hallowell.

An idea takes root

“In midsummer, when people go on vacation or just get bored, a lot of stuff was left to rot,” Oppenheimer says. “I called a meeting and told the gardeners, ‘If we’re going to have an ample harvest, the least we can do is give the food to people in town who are hungry.”

But when he found it hard to locate food pantries in a town encompassing 80 square miles and 26,000 people, it was his first clue that there was a problem.

“Many food pantries are run out of church basements or in storefronts by organizations that don’t have a web presence or telephone listing,” Oppenheimer says. “It dawned on me that if I couldn’t find them, others couldn’t either. It was an epiphany.”

While at first affiliated with Sustainable West Milford, by April of this year AmpleHarvest.org incorporated as an independent nonprofit organization. Oppenheimer expects to have full tax-exempt status before the year ends — an important step in attracting donations to keep the company up and running.

“AmpleHarvest is virtual, and therefore it can be everywhere at no extra cost,” Oppenheimer says. “That makes it a little different than the Plant a Row for the Hungry program sponsored by the Garden Writers of America. No criticism meant, but the flaw in that model is that it needs people on the ground in the community working to make it happen.”

Enriching society

With the AmpleHarvest concept, the individual gardener goes straight to a participating pantry. So far, 97 local food pantries in New Jersey, mainly in northern locations, are registered with AmpleHarvest.org. Southern Jersey communities are still underrepresented, but Oppenheimer hopes that will change as word gets out.

Oppenheimer believes his campaign appeals to gardeners because it encourages them to be philanthropists, creating food wealth and making society richer by giving that food away. But what do gardeners think? Susan Cohan, a residential garden designer based in Chatham, also has tried to draw public attention to sharing harvests with the hungry.

In a one-woman initiative, she designed a kitchen garden this spring for the “Mansion in May” show house in New Vernon, opened to the public as a fundraiser sponsored by the Women’s Association of Morristown Memorial Hospital. Cohan donated the harvest culled during the month-long event to the Interfaith Food Pantry in Morristown.

“I raised 350 pounds of fresh organic produce on $100 of plants and seeds,” she says. “Every single time I brought those bags over to the food pantry, my step was lighter and I was more joyous for having shared that food. It did me a lot of good to do a lot of good.”

It’s hard to imagine any gardener feeling different, and AmpleHarvest provides the missing link that connects good intentions to good acts. Visitors to the website can choose “Find a Pantry” from the main menu to participate. With one phone call, gardeners can determine what days are best for produce drop-offs.

Oppenheimer is about to announce a special initiative focusing on Gulf Coast states, where the BP oil spill has compounded hardships faced by residents since Hurricane Katrina.

He’ll be targeting garden clubs, pantries and faith-based groups, and sending messages via AmpleHarvest’s Facebook and Twitter feeds. The effort will be different in intensity but not in kind from what’s going on elsewhere in the country. It is, he says, a campaign to “lower the misery index” in a downtrodden area – but one where food crops can be raised 12 months a year.

Oppenheimer admits he’s not sure where AmpleHarvest.org is going, but so far, it seems to be making a difference in many communities across America. And Oppenheimer, a cheerleader for small acts of kindness, has a following that stretches from West Milford to Spokane, Wash.

“I only wish that three people could see this taking shape,” he says. “One is my father, who passed away a few years ago. The other two are my first- and third-grade teachers, who said I would never amount to anything.”

Garden Diary appears every other week in H&G Today. You may reach Valerie Sudol at vsudol@starledger.com.